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If It Needs Protection, It Needs HoGo

added: 03.25.2014, by Mike Spinney

Have you ever had a paid subscription to an electronic newsletter or research service and gotten a copy of their latest report and, after poring over its contents, thought to yourself, “Sally would be interested in this information?” So you forwarded a copy of the document, or you printed it out and made a couple extra to give to friends and associates?

Okay, maybe you haven’t. Readers of Blog Confidential are all upstanding citizens who follow the rules and look with disdain on cheaters, after all. But you’ve known someone who did. A generous friend (wink wink) who used his company’s expense account to pay for the research service and felt justified in sharing the proprietary information because, well, it was expensive and the recipients were all partners and colleagues.

Did this friend happen to see the “unauthorized distribution is prohibited” notice printed at the bottom of each page, or the ghostly copyright watermark looming hauntingly behind the text? Sure he did, but those words were barely a speed bump on the road to copyright perdition.

Or maybe you are the editor or researcher who toiled for hours compiling the report. Before finalizing copy on your template you may have glanced at said notice or watermark and rolled your eyes knowing full well that for each recipient there are a handful of potential subscribers who won’t be paying for your product because of the helpful redistribution that inevitably takes place as soon as your message hits the in-box. If each only paid a fraction of the subscription cost your efforts would be far more profitable, but you have resigned yourself to the frustrating fact that unauthorized distribution is a cost of doing business.

If you had a way to effect intellectual property protection on your research report—a way to distribute the information and ensure that your subscribers weren’t acting as shadow publishers—would you do it? Of course you would. You’d leap at the opportunity to maximize the return on your investment of blood, sweat and tears. You aren’t running a charity, after all.

Digital Rights Management makes it possible. And with HoGo, DRM is fast, convenient, and inexpensive, allowing you to protect PDF documents after they have been delivered to the intended recipient, not merely protect them in transit. HoGo prevents unauthorized sharing, forwarding, and illegal copying and also stops accidental leaks.

HoGo’s document protection service gives you control over your newsletters, research reports, ebooks, memos… whatever document you need to secure.

If it needs protection, it needs HoGo.